Leadership behaviors are often mimicked throughout an organization, and just as incivility can spiral,
so too can respect.
The cascade from the top down is also likely to shape the way employees treat customers, industry partners, and members of the community. It is no coincidence that in recent years Costco was both rated America’s best large employer by
Forbes
and tied for “America’s favorite retailer” in a survey by the American Customer Satisfaction Index. On the other end of the spectrum, companies at the head of “worst customer service” lists often top “worst places to work” lists as well.

Televerde operates in an unusual context—but the need for respect is universal.

Beyond ensuring a baseline of owed respect, leaders can identify and tailor the mix of respect types that will best enable their employees to thrive. Although it’s likely that a higher level of both owed and earned respect is needed, you might have reasons to emphasize one type or the other. Perhaps you’ve set a goal that requires a lot of collaboration and cohesion, warranting greater emphasis on owed respect. Alternatively, if your culture focuses largely on individual contributions, you might emphasize earned respect while ensuring that performance standards are transparent and direct employees’ attention to objective deliverables rather than to subjective comparisons with peers. What form might such expressions of earned respect take? According to a
McKinsey global survey
of more than 1,000 executives, managers, and employees, praise from an immediate manager, attention from a leader, and opportunities to head a project have more impact on motivation than do monetary incentives.

Deciding when to bestow respect is not like making a judgment that requires dividing up a fixed pie (as when allocating time, pay raises, or attention, for instance), argue
New York University’s Steven Blader and Siyu Yu.
Respect is not finite; it can be given to one employee without shortchanging others. This is true of both owed and earned respect: All members of an organization are entitled to the former, and all employees who meet or surpass performance standards deserve the latter. And an employee’s place on the org chart makes him or her no more or less deserving of respect. Owed respect should be accorded to janitor and CEO alike, and earned respect should be based on meeting or exceeding standards specific to one’s role.

Conveying respect doesn’t necessarily come at the expense of critical tasks. Christine Porath calls lack of time a “hollow excuse,” pointing out that respect is largely about
how
you do what you’re already doing.
Jane Dutton agrees,
suggesting that owed respect is best embedded in our normal interactions and can be as simple as communicating and listening in appreciative ways, being present to others, and affirming others’ value to the company. Still nervous about losing time? The small additions to your day needed to convey respect could
save
you substantial amounts of time. Porath shows that neglecting respect can be far more costly than attending to it: Dealing with the aftermath of disrespectful behavior, she estimates, consumes seven weeks a year for leaders and executives in
Fortune
1000 firms. The time and effort needed to recognize performance, greet others, or hold a door pale in comparison.

The loss of agricultural lands has fed into recent debates about Australian food security, compounded by predictions that Australia’s population will reach 36 million by 2050 and that the world will need to increase food production by 70–100% to cope with climate change and energy security scenarios (FAO
2009
; Commonwealth of Australia
2010
; Millar and Roots
2012
). Australia exports 60% of its total agricultural production, primarily cattle, wheat, and milk, while Australian farmers supply 93% of Australia’s domestic food supply (PMSEIC
2010
; ABARES
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). Maintaining this level of agricultural production will require responses to a range of challenges such as climate change vulnerabilities, soil fertility decline, and water scarcity in certain social sectors.

The Australian government is in the process of developing a
National Food Plan
to “…ensure Australia has a sustainable, globally competitive, and resilient food supply, supporting access to nutritious and affordable food” (DAFF
2012
). The use of existing urban and peri-urban lands for food production through encouragement of community gardens, backyard gardens, and integration of edible landscapes into planning was raised as a key issue in stakeholder meetings, but there are no actions currently planned to address this (DAFF
2012
). Instead, the approach is to continue support of existing commercial agricultural sectors in urban centers outside the state or territory capitals, known as regional cities (Beer et al.
1994
), since more than 90% of food production jobs are located there.

The economic importance of agriculture in regional areas is also recognized by the regional cities themselves. In places such as Greater Shepparton in regional Victoria, supporting the agricultural sector is crucial in the municipality’s latest urban plans (GSCC and Coomes Consulting
2006
). But no explicit connection to the consumption of local food or support of social initiatives related to food security was made in the Greater Shepparton urban plan, despite evidence of food insecurity issues in regional cities (GSCC and Coomes Consulting
2006
). For example, in 2008, 8.1% of people in the municipality of Greater Shepparton suffered from food insecurity and 53.9% of residents did not meet national guidelines for recommended daily fruit and vegetable consumption compared to 5.6 and 48.2%, respectively, across the state of Victoria (GVPCP
2011
). The urban agriculture movement is establishing a presence though: a recent newspaper article stated that people in the Goulburn Valley of Victoria are fed up with the supermarkets’ lack of produce from the local region and that there has been an “extraordinary explosion” of farmers’ markets in response (Millar and Fyfe
2012b
). Indeed, the establishment of the
Greater Shepparton Food Security Alliance
in late 2011 marked the start of discussions about urban agriculture and its role in food security in regional cities.